


Too Close

by CopperRose



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Homeless, Clusterfuck AU, Gen, Homelessness, Kind of sad at the start, Orphan AU, Runaway AU, Running Away, ah clusterfuck au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 18:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6020518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperRose/pseuds/CopperRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The six of them hadn't had a real bed or warm meal in a long time. So when they were mistaken for members of this strange, massive family; how were they suppose to turn them down?</p><p>Based of the Clusterfuck AU created by the Tumblr user lux--et--umbra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Close

As diligent as adults could be, there will always be something that falls through the cracks. It wasn't their fault, not entirely. Things had become so jumbled up and they had so many strange but identical faces appearing every other day, how where they supposed to notice such a small group? Especially when they looked almost exactly like another group they already had.

They were used to adults not paying them much mind anyway, so it didn't really hurt when they arrived in the strange new place. At least here the adults gave them food and places to sleep and were surprisingly kind to them, even if they were simply mistaking them for their own children. And even if it was mistaken identity, it still felt nice when the bigger versions of Geoff and Jack would hug them or tell them to wash up for dinner, like they were part of the family.

It was surprisingly easy to get lost in the crowd of people and once they were lost in them, it didn't seem like they would ever realize they were there. None of the adults noticed that six seats were taken at the dinner table or rather they had no clue who took those seats and after a short while bickering and some blaming of the stupid props for running away again (whatever that meant), they simply got new chairs instead of really questioning where the other chairs had gone. They only slightly noticed that they weren't wearing the name tags that everyone else had, a single older Jack had seen them and reprimanded them for not wearing their name tags before producing new ones for them almost immediately, like he had expected them to lose them. They didn't pay mind to the fact that they didn't have beds, not noticing when they would slip into the basement at night and sleep under the stairs on whatever pillows and blankets they could steal during the day.

The only ones that seemed to notice them, funnily enough, were the other children. About a week after they had been unintentionally adopted by the large group of people, they had woken up to the site of two of the younger teen versions of Ryan standing over their makeshift bed. They had thought the Ryans would tell on them and that they'd be thrown out of the big beautiful home that they had grown fond of but they had simply said that Papa Geoff was making breakfast, so it was time to get up. In only a week more, other versions of themselves were insisting that they share beds with them and sometimes they took them up on that offer but all too often the group would retreat back to their place under the stairs.

Eventually they grew comfortable. They felt like they had found a home among these strange people and that the other kids that looked so much like them were what they imagine having siblings might be like. They wanted to be happy about this but they knew this was a bad thing.

Never too close. That had been their rule for a long time now. Adults, many of them tried so hard; they could be kind, they could give them hope that maybe this was really the time they would call a place home, they could even be loving but no matter how hard they had tried, they had always fallen short for all six of them. They were always returned back to the foster care they had started in, whether it be because they thought the child was too much for them or because the people weren't fit to be parents or simply because they didn't want them. The kids had all lived through a dozen different hells and over time realized that they didn't want to live through it any longer.

It had been looking so good for Ryan, right up until he had apparently said something weird again. He didn't mean to, he hadn't thought it was strange. It was just a joke, the kind of joke he would make with his friends back in foster care. How was he supposed to know that it wasn't okay? His new “parents” had packed him up in only two days and he never saw them again. But when he saw the other five boy (two of which he remembered being adopted before he had been adopted himself) all back in the foster home, he felt like he really was home again.

They all must have felt the same when they saw Ryan return or rather after they saw that he was returned.

Geoff had announced very quietly to them that they were leaving. They were going to get out of this terrible little house, away from all the terrible adults that clearly didn't care about them. Maybe it was because they all agreed with him or maybe it was because he was the oldest; whatever the case was, they all followed him with very little question.

How they survived for as long as they had was still amazing. They both relied on the kindness of strangers and, barring that, the quickness of their hands. By the time they were ten Gavin was a natural pickpocket, Ray could disappear into a crowd in seconds, and Michael had learned how to hold his own in a fist fight. The older boys learned their own set of skills surprisingly quickly as well, mostly to keep the young three alive. Ryan could craft a lie with ease and most adults either didn't think much about the matter or believed him immediately, Jack had a knack for finding them places to stay that were both safe and dry and he always managed to make those places keep them warm even during the winter, and Geoff always found a way to bring home food, whether it be stolen or pulled out a trashcan somewhere, he never let his boys go hungry.

Those skills had helped them survived the tough streets they had come from and those streets had made them who they were but now they didn't quite know what do with themselves. They had been ready to pack up and run the moment they had been brought into these people's home but the longer they stayed the less they felt like that had to to go and more they felt like they belonged in the massive mansion. Could they really keep living there without being noticed? Surely the thought was too good to be true.

It was.

The adults were apparently not as clueless as they had thought. The boys opened their eyes one morning and realized they weren't in their makeshift bed under the stairs any longer. They were all in a their own soft beds in a nice big room, with colorful walls and with a few new toys decorated with bows. A note sat on each of their bedside tables, all of them saying something to the effect of “Welcome home. You're welcome to stay as long as you like.” It was reminiscent of some of the kinder families that had taken them in and brought back fond and almost happy memories.

But those people had sent them away too, hadn't they?

They panicked immediately and were readying to pack whatever they could as soon as they realized they had been found. They didn't get very far out of their room before they were stopped by the man often called Mama Jack. He smiled at them and told them it was breakfast time before they were being ushered to the dining hall. They tried finish their meal quietly, hoping they would be forgotten and they could run off the premises once everyone went off to do their own thing.

The trouble was that everyone was apparently aware of them now. Suddenly everyone had questions for them. Where they came from, why they hadn't mentioned that didn't belong there soon (or rather at all), what their interests were, and if they had any in put on what they wanted for dinner that night. They did their best to bluff their way through the conversation but more than a few true things managed to slip out as they spoke.

After breakfast they tried to slip away at last but were dragged off by the fellow kids and a few of the more parental adults to a playground built on the premises, where they ended up staying until lunch. It seemed like at every turn one of the kids or the adults was there to keep them from escaping and by the time night had fallen they had been tucked in by Mama Jack and Papa Geoff and were far too tired out by all the playing the other kids had forced them to do during the day to even think about running away.

And that was simply how life went for a while. Sometimes the other kids would sleep in their room with them at night and sometimes they would sleep with the other kids and a few times they had convinced the adults to let them have massive sleepovers in the living room. The boys didn't have moment's peace for almost a month and at some point the six of them got used to it all over again. Eventually when they played along with the other kids it was genuine and at some point they learned to trust the adults, who at least some small part of them knew only wanted what was best for them.

In time the boys saw that these people were kind and treated them like they loved them, like they were truly a member of this fucked up massive family. They laughed when Ryan said something that most adults might find creepy and after they learned how easily he could make people believe him, a few older Ryans started taking him with them to their acting classes. After learning Geoff had supplied his friends with food even while on the streets and even if it meant pulling something out of the trash to survive, a dozen different Geoffs had opted to teach him how to cook a proper meal. Jack had been taken under the wings of several of his alternate selves, learning quickly that it seemed that almost all of his various selves focused a lot of their time and energy into keeping their little families from falling apart and in a way Jack felt sure that he had to do the same as them, even if it was something a simple as being sure that the other kids were comfortable. Gavin was torn between two different kinds of people, first was Vav and few others who insisted that they were going to turn him away from his life of theft and teach him the ways of being a superhero, second group was many older versions of himself who started training him to become an even better pickpocket than before and had trained him so well that he had managed to steal Vav's cape and most of the watches in the house before someone caught him in the act. By the time the older Michaels were done with him, Michael had properly learned how to fight with both his fists and a knife and while he couldn't beat any of his older selves, he could hold his own against the for an impressively long time – though he was made to swear that he would never tell Mama Jack or Papa Geoff. And, of course, if Ray had been hard to find before when he didn't want to be found, then he was damn near impossible to be found now; where he had learned these skills, none of the many Rays could say or rather they wouldn't admit to knowing the answer.

It didn't happen all at once but in time they stopped thinking about running away. They stopped being afraid that they would be thrown out or that they wouldn't be wanted one day. They grew to loved the place they called home and learned to love the people in it. It was scary and different but so were the streets at first and they had survived them, so they could sure as hell survived all these strange, wonder people.

**Author's Note:**

> So this happened and I have no fucking clue how. I had just finished watching the Clusterfuck Live Stream and I guess I was inspired because I sort of blacked out and when my brain came back I had three pages of this.
> 
> I've been wanting to write something Clusterfuck related for a while now but I never had any idea what I wanted to write. To be honest, I'm not even sure where this plot came from, it just sort of happened. (Wish that could happen more often but beggars can't be choosers.) 
> 
> I hope it isn't terrible because I'm not sure how I feel about how it turned out. Sorry if it isn't so great. Also, sorry for typos.


End file.
